Canfield’s account of the history and importance of oxygen won him the 2014 ASLI Choice Award and will be recognized as “a well-documented, accessible, and interesting history of this vital substance.” Wood received an honorable mention for this year’s Choice Award in History. Tambora, will be acknowledged as “a book that makes this extreme event newly accessible through connecting literature, social history, and science.” More general information on the awards can be found, here.

Each week we post a round-up of some of our most exciting national and international PUP book coverage. Reviews, interviews, events, articles–this is the spot for coverage of all things “PUP books” that took place in the last week. Enjoy!

ROUGH COUNTRY

Everything is bigger in Texas, right? Our first book is certainly worthy of the Lone Star State and the big things found there. This week we start off with Robert Wuthnow’s forthcoming book, ROUGH COUNTRY: How Texas Became America’s Most Powerful Bible-Belt State. Tracing the intersection of religion, race, and power in Texas from Reconstruction through the rise of the Religious Right and the failed presidential bid of Governor Rick Perry, Rough Country illuminates American history since the Civil War in new ways, demonstrating that Texas’s story is also America’s. In particular, Wuthnow shows how distinctions between “us” and “them” are perpetuated and why they are so often shaped by religion and politics.

Anyone seeking to examine the relationship between modern American religious conservatism and politics needs to look no further than Wuthnow’s authoritative, encyclopedic survey of Texas’s influence on national trends.

We keep with big ideas and endeavors with our next title, THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORLD: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, written by Jürgen Osterhammel and translated by Patrick Camiller. A monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation of the World offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jürgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and towering erudition. He examines the powerful and complex forces that drove global change during the “long nineteenth century,” taking readers from New York to New Delhi, from the Latin American revolutions to the Taiping Rebellion, from the perils and promise of Europe’s transatlantic labor markets to the hardships endured by nomadic, tribal peoples across the planet.

THERE is a tale of the great scholar Wang Yangming (1472-1529) that says one day he tried to understand how a bamboo works. He gazed at a bamboo in his academy with such undeviating attention and energy that before he could arrive at any conclusion he collapsed after seven days of intensive effort.

Commenting on his failure in his later life, he pointed to the importance of methodology, citing the vital importance of the heart in the understanding of the external world.

When I was confronted with an English edition of Jürgen Osterhammel’s “The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century” (translated by Patrick Camiller), my curiosity was naturally aroused by the methodology used in organizing the enormous amount of material contained in this volume of 1,000 pages.

Although Osterhammel restricts his attention to the epic 19th century, he must look beyond that century of contacts, for the seeds of changes had been sowed long ago.

Next, we bring you a book that will blow the top off of your bookshelf. We’re talking about TAMBORA: The Eruption That Changed the World by Gillen D”Arcy Wood. When Indonesia’s Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it unleashed the most destructive wave of extreme weather the world has witnessed in thousands of years. The volcano’s massive sulfate dust cloud enveloped the Earth, cooling temperatures and disrupting major weather systems for more than three years. Amid devastating storms, drought, and floods, communities worldwide endured famine, disease, and civil unrest on a catastrophic scale. On the eve of the bicentenary of the great eruption, Tambora tells the extraordinary story of the weather chaos it wrought, weaving the latest climate science with the social history of this frightening period to offer a cautionary tale about the potential tragic impacts of drastic climate change in our own century.

Although Wood is a scholar of English literature, Tambora really showcases his skills as an environmental historian. He combines rigorously researched scientific information with a vivid and compelling narrative, assembling a complex jigsaw puzzle of anecdote and evidence into a coherent account that is further brought to life by a well-considered selection of historical artworks and scientific diagrams. By focusing on the human aspects of climate change, he demonstrates both the teleconnection of different climatic events linked to the eruption, and the (often overlooked) connectedness of seemingly disparate academic disciplines and fields of inquiry. This interdisciplinary approach is Tambora’s greatest strength and should assure it a wide readership.

Our final book takes a look at the rivalry between an established and a rising world power. STRATEGIC REASSURANCE AND RESOLVE: U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century addresses the growing tension between the United States and China. In this book, James Steinberg and Michael O’Hanlon stake out a third, less deterministic position. They argue that there are powerful domestic and international factors, especially in the military and security realms, that could well push the bilateral relationship toward an arms race and confrontation, even though both sides will be far worse off if such a future comes to pass. They contend that this pessimistic scenario can be confidently avoided only if China and the United States adopt deliberate policies designed to address the security dilemma that besets the relationship between a rising and an established power.

Each week we post a round-up of some of our most exciting national and international PUP book coverage. Reviews, interviews, events, articles–this is the spot for coverage of all things “PUP books” that took place in the last week. Enjoy!

We’re starting this week off with BIG things. First up, we bring you a book that is large in terms of page count and scope: Jürgen Osterhammel’s The Transformation of the World, translated by Patrick Camiller. A monumental history of the nineteenth century, this bookoffers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jürgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and towering erudition.

Some history books resemble miniatures in lockets: delicate renderings of an individual. Others move across larger canvases, as authors try to bring to life complex events, such as wars, or convey a country’s changes over time. But sometimes members of the historian’s guild take on topics of such staggering scope that the final work is more akin to the sprawling panoramas, filling whole rooms, that were popular in Europe during the 1800s—the period of focus in Jürgen Osterhammel’s “The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century.”

Osterhammel’s book is also reviewed in Standpoint, and Jeremy Black calls the book “massive,” “interesting,” and “impressive.”

Are online daters getting more when they break out their wallets to join paid dating websites? Or are free services just as useful? NYT economics reporter Shalia Dewan addresses the conundrum of these middlemen of the internet, specifically online dating websites that boast about match-making algorithms. Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, author of A Social Strategy, provides part of the answer in the article. Dewan writes:

Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, a Harvard Business School professor and author of “A Social Strategy,” examined hundreds of thousands of interactions on dating sites and found that the profiles people view on eHarmony­ are very similar to the profiles people view on other sites. The vaunted matching algorithm, he says, doesn’t really do that much that you can’t do for yourself. And as much as we may appreciate having our choices limited, if only to save us from being overwhelmed, from a purely economic standpoint, there is no benefit to limiting your own options, even if it means getting sucked into a time-consuming rabbit hole.

What makes social media so different from traditional media? Answering that question is the key to making social media work for any business, Piskorski argues in his book. In A Social Strategy, he provides the most convincing answer yet, one backed by original research, data, and case studies from companies such as Nike and American Express. For more on Piskorski’s findings about social media, you can preview the preface and first chapter of his new book.

In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the “Sea Peoples” invaded Egypt. The pharaoh’s army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C., which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown.

How did it happen? PUP author Eric Cline has an explanation.

In this major new account of the causes of this “First Dark Ages,” 1177 B.C., Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. 1177 B.C. is reviewed by NRC Handelsblad. An English translation of the review has been posted on reviewer Jona Lendering’s blog. Lendering writes:

Cline’s Bronze Age shares characteristics with our own age, and if we accept this, we can only conclude that Cline has written one of this year’s most interesting books.

“What links Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Turner’s red skyscapes, starving Irish peasants and the rise of the international drugs trade? They all came into being because on April 10, 1815, a volcano blew its top on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa.”

So writes the Times‘ Robbie Millen, who reviews Gillen D’Arcy Wood’s Tambora. So what is the story behind Tambora? When Indonesia’s Mount Tambora erupted in 1815, it unleashed the most destructive wave of extreme weather the world has witnessed in thousands of years. The volcano’s massive sulfate dust cloud enveloped the Earth, cooling temperatures and disrupting major weather systems for more than three years. Amid devastating storms, drought, and floods, communities worldwide endured famine, disease, and civil unrest on a catastrophic scale. On the eve of the bicentenary of the great eruption, Tambora tells the extraordinary story of the weather chaos it wrought, weaving the latest climate science with the social history of this frightening period to offer a cautionary tale about the potential tragic impacts of drastic climate change in our own century.